


EULA

by KittenKnife (dark_pookha)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: FFT, Faeries - Freeform, Revenge, Witchcraft, fey, the wild hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_pookha/pseuds/KittenKnife
Summary: Henri Deschamps broke a vow he made before the fey. His wife wants him punished for his indiscretions.The Wild Hunt doesn't have to hunt you to the ends of the Earth in modern times to destroy you.Written for TidalDragon's Knockout Challenge 2019-20
Kudos: 1





	EULA

The phone rang insistently. Maman LaFée rose with a sigh from her comfortable wing chair. She gripped her walker tightly and slowly made her way to the screaming phone. "D'accord, je viens!" she shouted at it.

She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. "Allô?"

The voice on the other end was shouting loudly. Maman LaFée held the receiver away from her ear and waited for a pause in the hysterical sobbing. When she spoke, it was with a strange, sing-songy accent. "Marie, please slow down, my English is not so good that I follow everything."

Far away, on another continent, Marie gulped in a sob and started to cry again, making what she said difficult to understand. She sat in her home's kitchen with her back against a cabinet. Her phone was in her hand.

"He-he wants to get a divorce." She sobbed and began shouting again. "That fucker said he doesn't love me anymore!" 

She started to say more, but her grandmother cut her off. "Marie, tais-toi!" She spoke to her like she was a child. "Please, Marie, talk to me calmly." Maman LaFée sat heavily on a Louis XIV chair. It and she both groaned as she sat.

"When did this happen?"

"He left me a text message this morning, knowing I wouldn't open it until after work." She looked down again at the image that accompanied the text. Her husband had sent her a photo from Jamaica with a picture of a woman on her knees with her head between his legs. 

The accompanying text was short:

_Marie-Divorce-Henri._

The rage built in her again and she began screaming at her grandmother once more. "That fucker sent me a picture of some whore sucking him off! He broke up with me by text! I want him dead!"

Maman LaFée went very still on her seat. "Do you really?"

Marie sniffled. "What?"

"Do you want him dead?"

"I hope that dickwad dies a horrible death. I hope his little whore gives him syphilis and his dick rots."

Maman LeFée sat up a bit straighter. "What did he say when you got married?" Her eyes started to shine with a feral light. "Did he promise ‘til death us do part?'"

"Yes." Marie wiped her tears on the sleeve of her rumpled jacket. "He swore he'd love me forever and that we'd be together forever."

"Did he swear it in front of the priest?"

"What?" Marie held the phone away from her ear for a moment before replying. "Yes, he said that in front of the priest."

"I name him oathbreaker," her grandmother said.

"What?"

Maman LaFée flicked her free hand at a cabinet and it opened. She opened, clenched then opened her free hand again. A photo album shot across the room into it and she caught it with a grunt. It flipped unerringly page after page until it reached the photo of her granddaughter's wedding that she was looking for.

Marie and Henri were in their wedding finery, outside on a warm spring day. Behind the priest, she saw what she was looking for, a small ring of mushrooms near the fence. She smiled as she pictured Henri trying to get rid of them before the wedding--pulling them up one day and then they'd be back the next.

"What?" Marie repeated again.

"Don't you worry, my love. I name him oathbreaker. He swore a vow in front of God and the fey. He must be held to his word."

Maman LaFée ran her gnarled finger over the ring of mushrooms and a small creature appeared in the middle of it. Everyone thought faeries were cute, until they saw one in person: even in a photo she could see the blank white eyes and locust wings. It looked less humanoid and more insectile.

"I--what are you going to do?" Marie asked.

"I'm going to either make him keep his vow or fulfill your wish." Maman LaFée sighed.

"Whichever you want."

Marie sobbed one last time.

"I want him to pay; I don't know about killed, but I want him to pay."

"Very well; leave it up to me, chère."

"Okay, Maman. Je vous aime."

"Je t'aime." Maman LaFée thumbed the red disconnect button.

She summoned another book and read through the spell carefully. It wasn't difficult, and the ingredients weren't all that rare, but it was dangerous if you did it wrong. She read it through twice more and committed it to memory before rising with the help of her walker and hobbling to the living room. When she got there, she flipped the area rug aside with a gesture and sketched runes in the air. Her hidden summoning circle appeared. She checked it over very carefully before grunting in approval.

Next she gathered the ingredients and the candles. She arranged them all just so on the circle. She smiled; everyone always pictured pentacles, but this was a more elemental summoning than that. The candles made interlocking triangles, with the offerings inside their intersections; there a piece of raw meat, and there and broken bit of stone, and there a small figurine of a hound. She triple-checked it and then started the ritual.

It didn't take long; summonings of the fey rarely did. Summoning a demon or an angel, that took some time and a strange twisting of the tongue with all their inhuman languages.

She finished the ritual and waited--and waited--and waited. She must have done something wrong.

Her phone made a binging noise.

She sighed, grabbed it and clicked it on. A text message popped up right away.

So, you want to summon the Wild Hunt. Is this correct? If so, please reply ‘Yes' to agree to the terms and conditions.

‘Terms and conditions' was underlined with a hyperlink. Maman LaFée hesitated before clicking it. It was a standard End User Licence Agreement full of small print. She flipped back to the text message and replied ‘Yes'.

A few seconds later, she heard an engine roaring and a sleek, black Audi sedan pulled into her driveway. She hobbled to the window, but she couldn't see the driver behind the tinted black windscreen. A moment later, the door opened and a man stepped out.

He was tall and slim, but not skinny. His haircut and suit said ‘money,' as did the sunglasses he took off and casually threw into the passenger seat. He pulled a phone from his suit's breast pocket and looked at it, then frowned. He sighed and finally looked up.

He noticed her watching and smiled. The smile was electrifying and made him go from average to handsome. He navigated the uneven walkway to her door and as he raised his hand to knock, the door opened.

"Madame LaFée?" he asked without entering.

"Yes," she answered leaning on her walker as she came to the door.

"I represent Grimm, Yeth, and Conroy. I'm Caleb Conroy."

Madame LaFée sighed.

"I don't have time for this right now," she started to close the door, but he stopped it with his foot.

"Please, may I come in?"

She opened the door a bit, then slammed it on his foot.

He grunted and pushed back.

"Look, I've been nice so far, but if you keep it up, I'll huff and puff."

For a moment there was a contest of wills, her glower and his resolute foot in the door.

She sighed again and opened it.

"I told you that I don't want anything to do with my son's estate." He'd grown quite rich in America, but she didn't like the way he'd gone about his business and his money was tainted.

"Oh, I'm not only here about that." Caleb pushed the door open all the way and stepped in.

She gasped. Not many beings could casually enter her house without an invitation. He was more than he seemed.

"Who are you?" she asked, even as the answer came to her.

"Ah, you figured it out. I'm Caleb Conroy, Hound-King and current leader of the Hunt."

He went to the living room and examined the summoning circle she'd used before sitting. She followed.

"The old summoning."

He shook his head.

"So old-fashioned; we do it all online now through the App store. Or iTunes, if that's how you roll."

He laughed and she saw his teeth up close now. A normal human would just see well-kept teeth, but she saw the canines and the lolling doggy grin under it.

"So, yes, your son first. If you really want nothing to do with his money, you just need to sign and we'll donate to whatever charity you wish, or maybe it can go to your granddaughter, Marie?"

"Do you really represent Grimm, Yeth, and Conroy?" she asked. "Or are you just using them as a pretense?"

"I am the Conroy of Grimm, Yeth and Conroy; yes. Imagine my surprise when I got the text that I'd been summoned here as I was already on my way here on other business. Interesting _coincidence,_ isn't it?"

He laughed again. She didn't believe in coincidence. Luck, she believed in luck, but not coincidence.

"That money is tainted. I don't want it and Marie shouldn't have it either, she'll get enough from her soon to be late husband."

"Ah, that's why you called me. What has Henri done now?" He buffed his watch on his sleeve.

"You know Henri?" She was surprised, but shouldn't have been.

"Yes, I know Henri; our firm represents him in various interests."

He saw her glare and held up a placating hand.

"Human ones only; it shouldn't be a conflict of interest with what you need, but if it is, we'll find a way to work around it."

She knew he'd keep to the letter of the agreements, if not the spirit. Bargains with faeries were dangerous that way.

"So what would you like to do with your son's money?"

"What charity would you recommend?"

" _Médecins Sans Frontières_ would be my choice, or the ASPCA. If you're a real animal nut, then PETA, but it wouldn't be my first choice."

"Doctors without Borders is fine," she said.

He pulled a pen and a sheaf of papers and had her sign and initial at points.

"That's done finally, and now to the other business. Tell me about Henri."

She told him.

Caleb pulled his phone out and took a stylus from it.

"And what would young, beautiful Marie want done with Henri? What were her words?"

"At first, she said she wanted him dead, but then she relented and said she wanted him ruined."

As she spoke, he tapped on his phone. She could tell he wasn't writing, but was instead drawing glyphs or runes of some sort.

"And you? Do you want him ruined or killed? Killed is fast and easy, but ruined, ah, that may take more time, but would be much more fun."

He smiled again, showing his teeth and Maman LaFée shivered.

"How would you ruin him?" she asked.

"Oh, every way we could." He laughed.

"It's amazing what you can do in this day and age. I can ruin his reputation, his business, his life, his sanity or any combination of them."

She thought of Marie's broken face.

"All of them."

* * *

Henri looked at his GPS briefly; it had just said, "Recalculating," and then sat there for a moment like it was having connectivity issues. As he looked, the screen glitched for a moment, then came back. His new route appeared.

_"In 100 feet turn left."_

He brought his attention back to the road just in time to avoid an old LTD that had drifted into his lane. He honked and a middle finger shot out from the driver's window of the car. Henri smiled and just shook his head.

He followed the GPS directions, but it soon became obvious that it had led him far away from his destination. There was an open parking space in front of a bodega, so he pulled into it to reset his GPS. After it had rebooted, it popped up the same route again. He sighed and turned it off.

He pulled out his phone and put Svetlana's home address in it and it paused for a moment. He looked at his reception bars and saw this was a 3G only area and sighed again. After a few seconds, the route came up on his phone. It was the same as the GPS's.

He looked it over. It said there was construction on the road he'd usually take, but Henri didn't remember construction there this morning. He put his phone in its holder on the dash and started to put his SUV back into drive when there was a tapping at the window.

He turned to his left, just as the pistol slammed into the window, showering him in safety glass. He turned away instinctively and felt the barrel of the gun against his neck.

"Nice car. Get out." The voice had the intonation that it wouldn't say it again.

"Don't look at me, or it'll be the last thing you see, got it?" The gun pushed against him harder.

He gulped and nodded.

"Got it."

He opened the door and got out, careful to keep his gaze averted. The gun never wavered. The man's other hand pushed Henri down onto his knees and a foot pressed his face into the ground.

"You can get up when I pull away."

The gun pulled back and Henri heard the man get into his car. With his head turned, Henri didn't notice the small, locust-winged creature land on the gunman's shoulder and whisper in his ear. The car door closed and it drove off. 

Henri stood and patted himself down. He automatically reached into his breast pocket for his phone, but it was in its dock on the dash. Even worse, it was programmed to go to Svetlana's house, so now the thug that had car-jacked him knew where she lived.

He went into the bodega and the man behind the counter eyed him.

"Could I use a phone, please, I just got car-jacked." He could hear a tinge of panic in his voice and hated himself for it.

The clerk shook his head and pointed at a sign.

_No phone_

"All right, could you call 911 for me then?"

"Police won't come here, taxis either if that was your next question."

"Well, fuck. The creep that carjacked me has my girlfriend's address and I'm worried about her."

"How far away is it?" the man asked, pulling out a beat-up flip-phone.

"Greenwich," Henri said.

"My cousin'll take you there for forty bucks. I can have him here in 5 minutes."

"Forty dollars?" Henri shouted. A cab would only cost twenty-five, including the tip.

"Like I said, taxis won't come here and the police would take an hour if they even would come at all. They wouldn't come for the folk here, but you, Richie-Rich, they might come for you. Take it or leave it." The clerk started to put away his phone.

"All right, all right. Forty bucks."

"Show me you got it first."

Henri dug out his wallet and pulled two twenties from it. The clerk pushed out the drawer under the plexiglass and Henri dropped the money in it.

Less than five minutes later a smashed-to-hell Accord pulled up.

"You the guy I'm taking to Greenwich?" the tweaker behind the wheel said.

"Yeah," Henri said and climbed in.

The driver took the route that Henri normally would have, and there wasn't any construction. Henri wondered if he'd been hacked somehow. He was always careful with 2FA, so he doubted it, but it could happen.

They pulled up soon outside Svetlana's house and he got out. The tweaker in the LTD drove off immediately. Henri went to the door and knocked, but there was no answer. He pulled out his key and started to unlock the door when he noticed it was unlocked. He cautiously opened it and stepped in.

"Lana?" he shouted.

There was no answer.

He had just turned the corner into the hallway when for the second time that day a muzzle was pressed against his neck.

"Don't move, federal agent."

Henri froze.

Another agent in TAC gear and with black tape over his name badge came from the kitchen toward him and gestured for him to get on his knees. He complied. The pressure of the muzzle behind him let off and then he was pressed face-first onto the ground and a knee dug into his back. His arms were yanked behind him and zip-tied. They sat him up.

"Who are you?"

"Henri Deschamps. This is my girlfriend's house, Svetlana."

The agent in front of him laughed.

"Svetlana Trebiskaya?" he asked.

"Yes."

"We've detained her."

"On what grounds?" Henri asked.

"She's overstayed her student visa by ten years. She's here illegally and is likely going to be deported."

Henri blinked. Svetlana had told him she had a green card. Wait, he'd seen it.

"She has a green card."

Both agents laughed this time. The one in front of him pulled a baggie out of his pocket and held it up. It had her green card in it.

"Forgery, and a damn good one." He tapped his nose as if he just thought of something.

"A fake like this takes a lot of money. She didn't have a lot of money; I wonder who did. Oh, right, you do." He slid the baggie into his pocket again.

"What do you want to do with him?" the agent behind Henri asked.

"Let's detain him for suspicion of abetting immigration fraud." The agent laughed again.

"You can't detain me without probable cause. I want to contact my lawyer now."

"We can detain you; we're within 100 miles of the border. You'll be released or arrested when we're done with our search of her house."

The agents stood him up and frog-marched him out the back door to a waiting plain black SUV. They stuffed him in the backseat and he heard the door lock when they closed it. They both went back into Svetlana's house.

As he sat there, he heard a rumbling and his own SUV pulled up beside the ICE one. The driver rolled down the window, tossed the keys on the seat and got out. Henri got his first good look at the man. He was tall and heavy, like a professional wrestler. His bald head gleamed with sweat as he walked to the ICE SUV.

He rapped on the glass and Henri saw the tattoo across the man's knuckles. It read, ‘BITE."

Henri pulled back and started shouting. The man opened the door, which had unlocked at his touch, and slammed a fist into Henri's face, turning his shouts to whimpers. Henri saw the fist had ‘BARK' tattooed on it.

"Things not turning out to your liking? If you scream, I'll have to hurt you, got it?"

Henri nodded.

"Now, you're going to be caught trying to escape, but if you do actually try to escape, this will happen."

The man lifted his hand and a window in the house across the alley shattered. Henri didn't hear the gunshot.

"We've got a sniper on you."

The man pulled Henri out and tossed him to the ground. His head hit the pavement and he felt a trickle of blood.

"Hard to get out of the car with those zip-ties, isn't it?" He picked Henri up and jammed him into the driver's seat of Henri's SUV. He pulled out a knife and cut the zip-ties, then wiped it down with his shirt and put it in Henri's hands. Henri started to lift his hand with the knife in it, but the attacker slapped it away contemptuously.

"Stop that." He slammed Henri's face into the steering wheel, and then once more. Henri passed out.

The man lifted one of Henri's eyes and looked at it. His pupil wasn't blown, so likely just unconscious. He pulled a small packet wrapped in brown paper out of a pocket and tucked it under the passenger seat. He grunted and even more sweat stippled his brow. Then suddenly where he had been standing, there was a large borzoi. It cocked a leg, peed on a tire, then started barking loudly.

One of the agents stuck his head out the door, cursed and shouted at the one inside. They both ran out seconds later, with their guns drawn. The first agent to get there checked Henri and laughed.

"Looks like he took a header getting out. He must have a confederate somewhere nearby."

He called for local PD backup and while waiting for them to arrive, he yanked Henri out again and dumped him on the ground. He flipped Henri on his stomach and zip-tied his hands again. He knelt on Henri's back while waiting. Henri started to stir again and make noise.

"Don't fucking move," the agent said, "or I'll have to hurt you some more. One more bruise from your escape won't matter, or two, or more."

Henri groaned.

"It was the carjacker," he mumbled.

"Shut the fuck up."

"It was the carjacker," Henri said, a bit more clearly this time as he spat blood on the ground.

"I said, ‘shut up,' dumbfuck." He grabbed Henri's zip-tied hands and bent one of his wrists back.

Henri screamed: the agent knelt on his back harder and Henri stopped screaming and was soon gasping for breath.

Approaching sirens heralded the arrival of the local police. The ICE agent pulled Henri to his feet and held onto him while the local police got out.

"This guy was just detained, but now he's under arrest for trying to escape."

The younger cop who got out of the passenger door spoke up.

"He looks pretty rough; is he okay?"

The ICE agent laughed.

"We had him in the back of our car, and someone drove this SUV here. We found him in the driver's seat of it, with his zip-cuffs off and a knife next to him. From what I can tell, he fell when he got out of the back of our car and took a header."

The older cop put a hand on the younger ones shoulder and squeezed gently as the younger one started to speak again.

"What do you need from us?" the older one asked.

"Just keep an eye on him until we're done, then we'll take him back into custody, okay?"

The older cop nodded. The younger one opened the back door of the patrol car and they jammed Henri in it.

Henri passed out again and when he woke up, he was in a room with his hands cuffed to a table, this time with real, metal handcuffs. His wounds had been cleaned some, but he was still wearing the same clothes as before.

A few seconds later, the ICE agent came in. Now he was wearing a shirt with his name on it, ‘Jacobson.' An arm-patch on the shoulder had a pack of wolves cornering a stag. It said, ‘1st Dogpack division.'

"Henri Deschamps?"

"Yes, that's me. I want to talk to my lawyer now before we talk about anything. My firm is Grimm, Yeth and Conroy."

"Oh, you'll get your lawyer, and you'll need him." Jacobson tossed a packet of IDs on the table between them. They were all in individual plastic bags with evidence tags on them.

They were all of Henri and Svetlana, but with different names.

"We found these under the seat of that SUV that you were trying to escape in, that also seems to be registered to you. Why don't you save some time and let us know who drove it there and where they went?"

"Lawyer, now. Grimm, Yeth and Conroy." Henri repeated.

"Ah, one of those. Okay."

Jacobson scooped up the IDs and put them back into a paper bag.

He left, and Henri lost track of time as he drifted in and out of sleep and/or consciousness.

Some time later, Caleb came in with an older man. Caleb was his corporate lawyer from way back, but he didn't know the other man.

"Henri, this is Lowell Yeth, he's one of our partners and our finest criminal attorney."

Henri laughed bitterly.

"Am I going to need a criminal attorney?"

"From what the officers were telling me, it sure sounds like it."

Caleb and Lowell both sat down across from Henri and he filled them in on his day. They both seemed very interested in the ‘carjacker' and after a whispered consultation between Lowell and Caleb, Caleb got up and knocked on the door.

Officer Jacobson opened it after a few seconds and let Caleb out. Lowell and Henri talked for a few minutes more before Caleb came in again. Caleb put his phone on the table and hit play on a video.

From Henri's dash-cam, they saw the carjacking. It stayed on the carjacker the entire time he was in Henri's SUV. Eventually after driving around aimlessly for a few minutes, the man turned onto an expressway. Another few minutes and he was stopping. He went out of frame for a bit, but when he came back, he was shoving a bloody Henri into the driver's seat. Henri struggled for a bit and a large hand slammed him into the steering wheel a couple of times. The man leaned across him and threw a packet of something under the passenger seat, then left the frame again.

"Well, this certainly seems to clear you of the escape charge," Lowell wheezed.

"And also the forgery charge," Caleb said. "Do you know that man?"

Henri shook his head. They talked a little bit more, then Officer Jacobson came back in.

"So, we'll have you out of here soon, but you're still under investigation; don't try to leave the country."

"What about my car and my phone?"

"Impounded. Evidence." Officer Jacobson grinned.

True to his word, it was only a half-hour later that Henri was released. Caleb drove him home.

"Man, ICE was not someone I thought I'd be dealing with today, you know?" Caleb asked.

"Did you know Svetlana's green card was fake?"

Henri shook his head.

"No. She told me it was good. How did they find out?"

"Anonymous tip, they told me," Caleb said.

"And what about Marie; when did you two split up?"

"Uh, we're not yet. I was in the process of filing for divorce, but hadn't quite got there yet."

"I never saw that paperwork cross my desk." Caleb side-eyed him. "Did you go with another firm?"

"Yeah, I went with McTavish-Myers. They were recommended as one of the best for divorce."

Caleb whistled.

"And one of the most expensive. Is it worth spending that much, or will it be more than if you just gave Marie half?"

Henri's anger flared.

"Bitch doesn't deserve half. All she did was sit on her fat ass while I made all the money. Not even a good lay either. She just looked good."

"But, I thought you didn't want her working because you worried that it made you look poor or something?"

Henri sighed and closed his eyes.

"Can we talk about something else?"

"How ‘bout them Mets?" Caleb said and the men talked baseball the rest of the way home.

As Caleb drove off, Henri staggered to his front door. He opened it and the smell hit him: rotten meat and decay. He gagged and went to the kitchen.

The fridge was open and everything in it was covered in crawling maggots. He stared at it in disbelief. Even if it had been open all day, the food shouldn't have rotted that fast. A fly buzzed him and he swatted at it reflexively. It bit his hand, then flew off. He could swear it cursed him as it flew away. Also, it flew straight away from him and down the hallway, not zig-zagging like a normal insect.

He cleaned up the mess and threw it all out. He opened the windows and set up fans to blow the stench out.

After showering, he went to bed and slept poorly. He had weird dreams of being chased by a pack of dogs. They cornered him in an abandoned store and just when they were about to tear him apart, he woke up to the doorbell buzzing insistently. He put on a robe and opened it.

A messenger was on the other side with an envelope.

"Yes?"

The messenger looked at him.

"Man, you look like shit. You Henri Deschamps?" He mangled the pronunciation of both of Henri's names.

"Yeah." He knew what was coming.

The man poked him with the envelope and Henri took it.

"Henri Deschamps, you've been served." The messenger pulled out a cell phone and opened it with his password.

"Would you sign here, please? It's only to show that I served you in person. If you fail to sign, I will note that, too, but I also have a body-cam running, so you might as well save yourself a step."

"No, you're just doing your job, man. I'll sign." Henri signed, then closed the door.

He slit open the envelope with his finger and pulled out the sheaf of papers. Marie was claiming that the prenup was void due to his adultery and she had proof. He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, but it still smelled of the rotten food from the day before and he closed it hastily.

He closed the fridge and tossed the envelope on the table. He dug through the cupboards and finally found an unopened box of granola bars that hadn't spoiled. He showered and shaved and when he saw himself in the mirror, he almost called in to work sick, but he put on his suit and set out for work. He got his old Beemer out of the garage. It hadn't been driven in a few months, but he kept it in good shape. He stopped on the way and got a new phone, which took a while. He had the clerk help him download all of his contacts and docs from the cloud to his new phone, which took another while. It was almost lunch time when he finally arrived at work.

"Good afternoon, sir," his secretary, Maura, said, then she stopped when she saw him.

"Are you okay, sir?" Her voice quivered.

"I will be. Sorry I didn't call, but I lost my phone and the store was way too slow getting me a new one. Anything I need to know?"

Maura gulped.

"There were some men in your office earlier from the SEC."

She took on a conciliatory tone.

"I had to let them in; they had a warrant."

"Did they take anything?" he asked, striding to his office door.

"Some documents, your computer tower, and your laptop." She sounded like she was begging now.

Henri closed his eyes and counted to ten.

"It's okay, Maura; you did what you had to. Please reschedule all my appointments for today, then you can take the rest of the day off."

As he closed his door, he heard her whisper, "Yes, sir."

His office was trashed. His computer tower was gone, his laptop was gone, his file cabinets were open and the files strewn about. He opened his desk drawer and his backup hard drive and his two USB drives were also gone.

He sat at his desk and pulled out his new phone. It didn't turn on. He did a soft restart on it, and it still didn't turn on. He was still fiddling with it when his door opened.

"Henri?" It was Fillard, a senior partner.

"Yeah, I'm here."

Fillard came in and closed the door behind him. He was only a few years older than Henri, but his family connections had set him up well for success and he'd become a senior partner in just fifteen years.

His eyes took in the office, trailing over the mess and lingering on the monitor with its cables dangling, unplugged.

"What's going on? SEC, you're late with no call, and I hear you got arrested by ICE yesterday? You doing okay?" He sounded genuinely concerned, but Henri knew it was all pretense.

"I'm okay. I was on my way to Svetlana's and got carjacked. When I got there, her place was being raided by ICE. They thought I had something to do with her forged green card."

Fillard knew better than to ask if he had been involved in the forgery, because he couldn't testify about things he didn't know about.

"The carjacker came back and made it look like I was trying to escape ICE custody and he did this to me."

Henri indicated his bruised and cut face.

"Caleb got me out of there after he showed the agents my dashcam video of the carjacker."

He rubbed his eyes.

"When I got home, all my food had gone bad, and when I got here, I found out the SEC had a warrant for my office."

"You haven't been doing anything to get their attention, have you?" This time he asked because it was a direct impact for the firm if there was something.

"No, I swear everything's been above board; no insider trading, no shady short-calls, no nothing. I can't imagine what the SEC thinks they have."

"Maybe you should take some time off."

Fillard stood, which meant the decision had been made already.

"You have a month off to get your shit together. After that, sink or swim."

Fillard left.

Henri threw his new phone across the room, where it shattered, then he put his head down on his desk and shook. When he'd got himself under control, he stood and walked out of his office, out of the building and to his parking spot.

His Beemer was gone. He reached into his breast pocket to get his phone, but it wasn't there.

He went back in and asked the security guard at the desk to show him the video of the parking lot. At first, the guard didn't want to, but after a second look at Henri's face he did.

The same man who'd carjacked him the day before walked up to his Beemer, did something that Henri couldn't see and got in the driver's side. A moment later, he pulled out in Henri's BMW. As he passed the security camera, he leaned his head out the window and smiled at it.

The guard called the police. When they got there, Henri told them what happened and the guard tried to play them the video, but it was glitched out and wouldn't play. They didn't seem to believe Henri, but took his report anyway. Henri used the guard's phone to call for a rental and drove it home.

Another envelope from Marie's lawyers was waiting for him as well as a slim letter from her grandmother addressed to him.

He opened the small envelope first.

A small rock with a hole in it fell out. He pulled the letter out and read it.

_You'll need this to see them. Mufle._

He picked the rock up and ran it around his fingers. It was smooth with use, like someone had either worn it as a ring or it had just been handled a lot. He put it in a pocket and opened the second letter.

This one was more serious, with the legal accusations that came with the divorce papers he'd received early. It went point by point down their prenup and disputed points. He wished he still had a home phone, but he and Marie had gotten rid of it a year before.

He took the letter, and got the papers from that morning and went to his home office. His computer booted quickly and he used it to chat with his divorce. They assured him that his prenup was rock solid. After that he talked with Lowell Yeth about the criminal charges, but ICE hadn't gotten anything to him yet.

He opened an incognito browser window and idly browsed pornhub before sighing and closing it. He couldn't even concentrate enough to masturbate.

He started to shut the computer down when he heard his overhead garage door open. He opened his desk drawer and took out the heavy automatic he kept there. A few seconds he heard heavy footsteps in the hallway.

A bald head looked around the doorway and Henri shot at it, missed, then shot through the drywall by the door.

"Son of a bitch!"

Henri fired again, but the man had already moved into the doorway and was charging Henri. This time, Henri hit him at least twice. The bullets slammed into the man, and one of them went all the way through and hit a picture in the hallway.

Then the man was on him. Henri felt his hot breath and blood dripped from the man's wounds onto Henri. The gun was twisted out of his hands and tossed into a corner of the room. The man leaned in and bit Henri on the cheek, tearing out a big chunk of flesh.

"I should eat you for that, but I was told not to kill you. Gonna fuck you up now."

He proceeded to fuck Henri up. He hurt him lots of different ways and if Henri tried to fight back, he hurt Henri more. When Henri was whimpering and bloody on the ground, the man took the gun back, shot the computer tower, which died in a shower of smoke and sparks. He then took the clip out of the gun, ejected the shell in the chamber and put the gun in his pocket. Finally he searched Henri. He took everything from Henri's wallet and then disappeared for a moment. Henri heard flushing from the bathroom down the hall. When the man returned, he tossed the empty wallet on Henri's crumpled body.

He finished searching Henri and found the stone. He held it up to his eye and laughed, then he held it in front of Henri's left eye, which wasn't swollen shut like the right eye.

Henri saw the man for the first time clearly. It wasn't a man, or it wasn't only a man. It was also a borzoi...and it was also a...Henri's mind could only come up with werewolf, but that wasn't exactly right. It was human shaped, and had a dog's muzzle and teeth, but wasn't furry. The nails were long and dirty, but not a dog's paw. As he watched a fly landed on the man's shoulder. As it passed into the field of vision provided by the hole in the stone, it changed. It was roughly an insect, but the closest pair of legs to the creature's head ended in human looking hands. It had a perfectly round face, with no ears and blank white eyes.

"Have you done your tasks?" it asked the man.

The man nodded, his doggy muzzle smiling.

"Enjoyed it, too."

"You always do," the thing said. "My brethren are almost done hiding all his shit and we missed some food yesterday, so we're searching more. Should be only two or three more minutes."

It buzzed off.

The man pulled the stone with the hole in it back and started to put it in his pocket, then he tossed it on Henri.

"You might like seeing what's doing this. Don't bother trying to show others, whoever made this thing keyed it to you, so it'll only work for you." He drew, kicked Henri in the nuts, then left.

As Henri writhed in pain, he heard more buzzing following the man out of the house. His front door opened, then closed. Henri passed out again.

Days later, Marie waited with her lawyers and Henri's lawyers, McTavish and Myers, for Henri's arrival at a deposition. He was late.

"If he's not here in another fifteen minutes, I'll ask the judge for a summary judgment on some of this. It won't be granted, but it'll cost Henri some money and time."

Marie nodded.

Henri staggered in a few minutes later. The first thing Marie noticed was his rumpled suit and the bruises on his face. The smell was the second thing. He smelled like he'd been sleeping in dumpsters. He had flies on his face and the shoulder of his suit.

Marie's lawyers pulled back from this apparition, but Marie merely smiled enigmatically. She could see the flies on him were actually fey; she had the blood. Her grandmother was true to her word, as she always had been. One of the fey licked a wound under Henri's right eye and it twitched involuntarily.

"Mr Deschamps, are you ready to proceed?" one of her lawyers said.

"My client is obviously in no state to proceed," McTavish said, but Henri interrupted.

"No, no, no, get them off. I'll give her whatever she wants, but please, it has to stop. They're everywhere and you just can't see them." He pulled the stone with a hole in it out of his pocket and looked around the room. When he saw McTavish he screamed again.

"You're one of them!" He tried to run out of the room, but McTavish grabbed him in an iron grasp and held him.

"One of who?" McTavish asked.

Marie concentrated and looked at McTavish more closely. She almost gasped, but held it in. This wasn't McTavish, but was instead an old man and he was a Hound of the Hunt. She turned to Myers and his personal glamour almost blinded her. He was a very powerful creature. She'd only seen this once before when she'd caught a glimpse of Queen Mab in a flower. Myers dropped his illusion, revealing himself as Caleb Conroy. Marie had met him before.

Caleb winked at her, and she saw his true form for just a second.

"You, you're also one of them!" Henri tried to launch himself at Caleb, but McTavish yanked him seated.

Marie's lawyers stood and backed into the corner.

"Sleep," Caleb ordered and her lawyers crumpled bonelessly to the floor.

"When they wake up, they'll have heard a very strange conversation from Henri here and will be very worried for him. Obviously, he's had a breakdown and needs psychiatric help; do we all agree?"

"Fuck you! Fuck all of you!" Henri shouted.

McTavish squeezed and Marie heard Henri's arm-bones creak, then crack. Henri screamed.

"That's enough of that." Caleb sighed.

"Your prenup is quite clear that if Henri is disabled that you have power of attorney. I believe he should be committed, don't you?"

Marie smiled again.

"Yes."


End file.
